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It is perhaps a little difficult to know what the early settlement that became Vaasa would have been like. One thing is certain, the geography of the area was dramatically different to the present site. Seven hundred years of land-rise means that in those days the area was at least seven metres lower, and would have had the sea right on its doorstep. Here is a series of maps showing the position of modern-day Vaasa from AD 400 to AD 1900.
A sea chart from 1348 shows Mussor (to become (Old) Vaasa) harbour to be on the west side of the south end of a long stringy island. A study of a modern survey map confirms this idea. The southern tip of this island would have been roughly where the Vaasa Occupational Training Centre stands, with Wärtilä Runsor on its own little island a little further south. Going northward, past (Old) Vaasa itself, the island would have included the areas now occupied by Prästgårdsbacken (Pappilanmäki - Priest's Hill), Kråklund, Aspnäs (Haapaniemi - Aspen Peninsula), and the higher western parts of Korsnästårget (Ristinummi - Cross Heath).
To the west of our stringy island would have been a channel separating it from the islands, which were then separate, but now form higher ground. Again, from south to north, the modern areas are called Rison (near where ABC Services are), Gamla Hamnen (Vanha Satama - Old Harbour) and Melmo (Melaniemi - Paddle Peninsula).
To the east would have been a long stringy channel, separating our island from Runsor proper and Höstves (Höstvesi - Rushing Water). This channel is now occupied by a golf course, the field areas of Norra and Södra Grundfjärden, and Vaasa International Airport.
The inhabitants were seemingly well aware of the land rise phenomenon, although they wouldn't have known whether the land was rising or the sea level falling, but then it didn't matter. The reality was that, as a community dependent largely on the sea for both fishing and trade, the all-essential water element kept running away. As time went by, it became necessary to build a canal to ease access to the sea. This canal still exists (click HERE to go to my Vanha Vaasa Canal Album).
The problem was not just that the seashore was getting farther away, but that the entire sea area was gradually getting shallower. Add to this the fact that the trading boats would have been getting bigger (and therefore deeper in the water), and we have an ongoing logistics problem that continues today.
Even when (Old) Vaasa was officially named in 1606, it was realised that the harbour and channels were already a bit too shallow. The first solution was to deepen the natural channel to the otherwise almost perfect, sheltered, west-facing harbour, and to extend this work northward until taking a sharp left before Pappilanmäki to pass north of the next island. Next were plans to create an outer harbour for bigger vessels at Hästholmen (where Vanha Satama now is), to be joined to (Old) Vaasa by what had become a canal project. By 1789 this work was superceded by a new outer harbour on Palosaari, some 10km away.
Palosaari Harbour is now used only by pleasure boats. Vaasa's even more recent Inner Harbour is host to small visiting survey and naval vessels, but all the bigger vessels (cargo ships, oil tankers and ferries to Sweden) are served at the western end of Vaskiluoto. Even here, there are restrictions on the size of vessel able to manoevre in the narrow channels.
So, the next harbour? Maybe at the far western tip of Replot (which would justify the capital investment in Finland's longest bridge), and there are even visions of a road link to Sweden, mostly hopping over the archipelago, and then plunging under the sea in a tunnel for the last few kilometres (or should it be nautical miles?)
There have been predictions that shipping worldwide could double in the next twenty years, and cargo ships are getting bigger and bigger. Vaasa's current harbour is joined by a long, sometimes narrow, nine-metre swept channel between islands and through shallow waters. After a few hundred years (and a lot of dredging) it would be more like a canal, echoing an earlier solution, except that his time it would need to be a ship canal.